Dust collectors are used in a wide variety of industries to control particles and pollutants, including power plants, steel mills and pharmaceutical and chemical production facilities. These apparatuses take in air laden with dust or pollutant particles and produce a filtered air stream by forcing the air through filters. The filters used in this type of air filter device include woven fabric filter bags, unwoven felt filter bags and filter cartridges.
In normal operation, the filters used in dust collectors will need to be replaced regularly. The replacement of the filters can be a time consuming process. In order to replace the filters, the dust collector must be shut down. In this case, the dust and pollutant producing process must also be stopped, or another dust collector apparatus must be run in replacement. Both solutions entail costs to the facility, either in the form of additional costs of maintaining supplemental dust collectors or in decreased production when the facilities must be shut down for the filter replacement.
In addition, the different filters in a dust collector may need to be cleaned or replaced at different rates, depending on their positions in the dust collector, thus creating a complicated replacement schedule for the various filters. For example, filters nearer an air inlet may get dirtier faster than filters farther from the air inlet, leading to a higher frequency of changing or cleaning the closer filters than the farther filters. Further complicating matters, the dust to be filtered out of the air may be of various particle sizes, and may be dry or moist depending on the facilities in which it is being used. Moist dust particles can cake onto the filter surfaces, causing an increase in the frequency of replacement necessary for the filters, especially those nearer the intake.